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Reps. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., and Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, are wrong to think that their bill proposing to end all energy tax incentives will stop the federal government from "picking winners and losers," writes Jimmy Glotfelty, an executive vice president with Clean Line Energy Partners. "Until a truly free market takes over ... a tax increase on the wind-energy industry will skew the market even more and have a detrimental effect on an industry that is generating clean, affordable, homegrown electricity, creating jobs and providing an economic shot in the arm to farmers, ranchers, rural communities and manufacturing towns all across America," he writes.

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Ernest Moniz, President Barack Obama's nominee for Energy secretary, sees natural gas as a means for the U.S. to achieve a lower-carbon future. "[W]e find that, given the large amounts of natural gas available in the U.S. at moderate cost ... natural gas can indeed play an important role over the next couple of decades (together with demand management) in economically advancing a clean energy system," Moniz said during a Senate hearing two years ago.

A bill by Reps. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., and Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, to roll back energy tax incentives unwisely targets the wind industry while protecting the tax credits for other energy sources, writes Denise Bode, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association. Wind power is the "most promising source of new manufacturing jobs" in the U.S., Bode writes. "At this critical time for our nation's economy, we should not be contemplating a tax increase on an emerging energy industry that is growing new manufacturing jobs," Bode adds.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu gave a speech at the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas highlighting the key investments made by the government since the Civil War that fueled the country's prosperity and progress, writes columnist J. Patrick Coolican. "Chu's broader point was that despite the difficult budget environment, now is no time to pull back from investments in clean energy just as those technologies get a foothold in the market, and just as the need to wean ourselves from foreign oil becomes more obvious every day," he writes. Coolican noted that traditional forms of energy have long enjoyed assistance from the federal government.

The wind farms along Texas' Gulf Coast reduced the impact of the state's recent power crisis, illustrating the benefits of wind power in a large utility system, according to Denise Bode, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association. The crisis revealed several lessons: wind power enhances a grid's reliability, conventional power plants can't operate all the time, wind farms that are dispersed are more dependable, and output from offshore and coastal wind farms can meet peak demand during summer, Bode writes.

The U.S. has benefited economically and environmentally from ethanol production, write John M. Sawyer and Michael C. Sawyer, CEO and executive vice president of Western New York Energy, respectively. "Ethanol eliminated the $6 billion to $8 billion spent annually on corn subsidies and spurred advancements in production technology that have increased the corn produced per acre by more than 60 percent since 1980," they write.